Hild: A Novel

by Nicola Griffith

  “You are a strange little lass,” he said in Anglisc, for all to hear.

  “I am the light of the world,” she said, clear and high, and the scop, always sensitive to dramatic possibility, drew an uncanny chord from his lyre, and at that moment a great gust of wind made the torches on the upper level gutter then flare.

  The hall fell silent.

  “I drink to you, little light!” He drained the cup, upended it, and the men beat their palms on the boards and the scop nodded to his whistle man and his drummer and they plucked a few measures of a lively air and, while the other women now moved to fill drinking horns along the benches, she could recross the hall without too many people paying attention.

  But as she approached Edwin he gestured to a houseman, who ran down the benches, and up, and said, “The king desires that you sit with him for the feast if, being a little maid, you are not too tired. And he desires me to take the cup from you now, so that you may walk with ease to his bench. Your lady mother and sister may join also, should you wish it.”

  Hild looked at Edwin and nodded. “Yes. I thank the king. But my sister can carry the cup. The girl with honey hair and the green dress.”

  Another houseman ran to bring Breguswith to Edwin, and Hereswith to Hild, to take the cup. Hereswith, twelve years old, brilliant in beryl green, with a silvered-tin brooch at her breast, gave Hild a complicated look as she reached for the cup, but looked startled when she felt its weight. “Thunor!” she said. “That’s heavy.”

  “Hold it tight,” Hild said, and she was glad to have a sister to walk beside her down the hall. The housefolk watched them closely. The boy who had stuck his tongue out at her poked his head through the curtained doorway and the houseman standing there—the kitchen chief, Hild saw—shooed him back. The chief seemed tense.

  Hild understood: He couldn’t serve until the cupbearer sat. “Let’s go faster,” Hild said.

  Breguswith timed her arrival at the head table to match theirs. Edwin stood, the æthelings and Lilla with him, and a fuss was made of seating them all: Hild, as cupbearer, to the king’s immediate left, her mother and Hereswith and Mildburh between the princes.

  The minute they sat, housefolk poured into the hall with roast pigs in apple-scented crackling and tubs of roasted vegetables and great wooden bowls of soup. At other tables, Hild saw, the men and their women shared the soup, passing the table bowl back and forth as they would a drinking horn, but at the king’s bench, each guest was brought his or her own birchwood bowl.

  Her mother gave her a meaningful smile—Talk to the king!—then turned to Osfrith. Hereswith looked at Eadfrith and nodded as though they had always sat side by side, and he said, “How do you, lady?” though his voice squeaked a little and his spotty skin reddened. The scop began a pleasant tune, with an endless feel to it, like spinning, and Hild understood she would be here a while. She wished her feet touched the floor.

  The king lifted his bowl and slurped. He wiped his beard with a heavy-ringed hand, wiped his hand on the cloth running along the edge of the table, looked at Hild. His eyes were mostly blue around the pupil and mostly green around the edge. She lifted her own bowl; without her feet to steady her, it seemed heavier than it should. The soup smelt of parsnip and cream. The steam rising from it was hot. She blew on the soup, took a tiny sip, blew some more.

  “A princess does not blow on her food in my hall,” said the king, with a smile.

  Hild nodded, then remembered she should talk. “Then what must I do? The soup is too hot, yet if I sit and wait, the whole will grow cold.”

  “An ætheling or a princess must never wait. Our food comes to the table just so.” He clapped his hands twice, clap-clap, and lifted her bowl. A houseman appeared at his shoulder with a fresh bowl. “See? Try that. Yes, perfect. And if it gets cold you learn to clap”—clap-clap—“for another.”

  Another houseman appeared. Hild recognised him as a friend of Onnen’s.

  The king ignored him. “A king’s table is always watched. They will have seen you blow; when you clap they understand your needs.”

  The houseman stood right there, while the king talked in his presence the way he wouldn’t even talk before his dog unless he gave it a fondle of its ears. Then he drank his own soup again.

  She tried not to see her mother’s swift glance up the table. She swung her feet to and fro, thinking.

  “I like your tunic, lord King.”

  He turned to her, puzzled.

  “It is a very fine red.” She tilted her head. “Though with our hair colour, blue is better.” She couldn’t interpret the look on his face. “I could help you pick the colour, next time.”

  “You could?”

  “I could.”

  “Well I thank you for that, little maid.”

  “I am seven. Not so little as I was. Though I do wish my legs were longer and would reach the ground.”

  “By all means, let us fix that.” Clap-clap. This time Hild watched. The houseman peeled himself from the wall and as he approached, another from farther along the room took his place. “Bring the maid a cushion.”

  When the man left on his errand, Hild said, “Do you not know my name, King? It is Hild.”

  “Hild,” the king said. “You are a strange little maid.”

  “So Prince Dunod says.”

  “What do you know of Dunod ap Pabo?”

  “That he would be sad for his wife if her brother were to be killed.”

  “He told you this?”

  “No, King, but what sister wouldn’t grieve for her brother, and what husband wouldn’t hurl himself at the wind to try to keep his wife happy?”

  Edwin leaned in. His pupils were expanding, drinking the blue centre from his eyes, until all was green and black. “You have seen this?”

  “My king?”

  He wrapped his huge hand around her right wrist. “Tell me true, now. You have seen Dunod ap Pabo go to war over the death of Ceredig ap Gualloc?”

  Hild blinked.

  Edwin shook her slightly, and it took Hild back to a time she couldn’t quite remember, the day her world changed, when her father died, and she saw the grey snakes of hair in Edwin’s beard and heard a voice: Tell Cadfan that he or his son shall have to face this serpent one day.

  “Cadwallon,” she whispered. Edwin let go as if scalded. “Cadfan’s son. Your foster-brother. He will have to face you.”

  “Hild,” he said. “Now I know that name. You are the one in the lady Breguswith’s dream, the jewel who will light the way.”

  Hild nodded. His face looked very strange, so pale that his eyes seemed to shine and crawl like summer flies.

  “You will light my way.”

  She nodded again. Talk to the king. “Yes, King. Though any light must have fuel to shine.”

  “Fuel, is it?” The colour began to come back to Edwin’s face, and, along with it, a knowing look.

  Hild felt encouraged. “Yes, King.”

  “And what do you ask from me as your … fuel?”

  “You are king, and do king things. My sister learns to weave. My—that is Cian—my mother’s … my mother’s gemæcce’s son, learns the sword. I want a path.”

  “A path? That is your price?”

  Price? She was aware of a houseman approaching bearing her cushion, but dared not pause now. “I want to learn, to wander and ask and think and listen like … like a priest or a prince.”

  “Not gold?”

  “Gold comes to priests and princes.”

  Edwin threw back his head and laughed. “So now we get to it. Gold.” He stood, looked over at his scop. The scop’s rippling music stopped, and he struck two peremptory chords. “Hear me!” the king shouted. “I have a challenge.” Every warrior in the room came to attention. A feast challenge meant gold for the winner. “Though, as it is Modresniht, my challenge is for a maid.”

  Puzzlement. Settling back of the men, leaning forward of the women. Breguswith’s eyes shone like blue glass.

 
; Edwin stripped the lowest band on his left arm, wrapped both hands about it—they barely met around the circle—and lifted it over his head. It was soft yellow gold, thick as his thumb, worth a hundred cattle, two hundred, five hundred. He turned slowly, so it reflected light to the farthest ends of every bench. Then he threw it onto the table.

  “Hild, princess and niece, jewel of Deira who will light our way in wisdom and prophecy, the gold is yours. To claim it, you must only fill our feasting cup to the brim, and carry it and the ring to our guest’s table without spilling a drop, and then back again.”

  Hild stood, beckoned to a houseman, pointed to the cup. Her mother’s eyes glowed so hot they might melt. Gold, acknowledgement of her status, and a path. All for one trip across the hall.

  It was impossible. The cup and ring together weighed more than half of what she did.

  “Hild,” said her mother, and beat gently with the palm of her hand on the table as her daughter passed her. “Hild,” said Hereswith as her sister walked by.

  “Hild,” said the women along the table, and then “Hild!” shouted one gesith, and now the drumming was like the surf at Bebbanburg, loud, unstoppable. “Hild. Hild. Hild.” There wasn’t a one among them who didn’t want to see her win an ætheling’s ransom from the king. She walked on the wave of sound the length of the tables and back up again until she stood before Edwin, on the other side of the board.

  The arm ring winked hugely in the light. The white mead shimmered in its great cup. Her arms would not carry both.

  Men’s strength is their weakness— A dog, snapping teeth—

  The houseman lifted the cup. Hild raised one hand: Wait.

  Neck rigid, haunches bulging. Furrows in the turf. Stretching the line of her back. Bend your legs …

  She looked at Edwin. “Edwin, King, I will carry your gold. I will carry it as a princess does, as a crown.” And she bent her head—but also her legs.

  When Edwin put the heavy ring on her head, Hild locked her knees and straightened one inch, two. It was like carrying the world. But she pushed with her feet and lifted and lifted until her spine was as straight as a plumb line and the weight poured through the muscles along her spine and in her thighs and calves and feet. She gestured to the houseman and turned to face Dunod and his folk. Then she accepted the cup.

  This was for her path, for her freedom, for her life and family. To make her dead da proud. She was strong. She was royal. She would set her will. She would do this.

  So she fixed her gaze on Dunod, on the glint of the gold around his throat, and she began. The drumming rose and, from the men, stamping and cheering. From the women, a ululation. And the sound swept her across the room, between the fire pits, to Dunod’s table.

  “Do drink it all, lord, if you will,” she said, and he did, in one long draught, and his men shouted and he bellowed, “Hild! Light of the world!” and Hild took the cup back again and, again, was swept across the hall to Edwin’s table. It seemed not so difficult to walk a clear path.

  3

  THE QUEEN’S ROOM at Sancton smelt of blood and weeping and, perhaps, Hild thought, something else. She stood by the door hanging, watching, listening, while her mother and the king stood by the empty bed. Like the last time Cwenburh miscarried, her women had washed her and carried her away to a new apartment, so that when she woke she would not have to remember staring at the heroic embroidery of the white horse, or the blooming apple tree, or that knot in the pine cladding on the ceiling while she screamed and bled and pushed and wept: for a bladder-size sack of slimed slipperiness, for nothing.

  “It would have been a girl, my king,” said Breguswith. “It would have been your peaceweaver.”

  Edwin was trembling. “Her women assured me this time all was well.”

  “Yes, my king. They thought it was.”

  “They?”

  Perhaps her mother hadn’t seen Edwin’s rage. Hild took a step into the room.

  “Are you, lady, not one of them?”

  Another step, and another until she stood by the small table at the head of the bed.

  “Oh, no, my king,” her mother said. “That is, yes, but you may recall I suggested to the queen after the last time that she wait, perhaps for a very long while.”

  “And you?” Edwin whirled on Hild, who was sniffing the queen’s cup, and thinking. “Perhaps an eight-year-old may prove wiser than the collective mind of my entire household. Tell me your prophecy, O shining light!”

  Hild put the cup down. She didn’t understand why he was so angry. He didn’t care much for his wife, and despite the court’s cautious optimism of the last few weeks about the queen’s pregnancy, no one could be surprised at this event, not after all the others. So it was something else.

  “Uncle, your wife will bear no more babies.” Not while Breguswith made her special heather beer and disguised the sweet gale with tansy.

  “None?”

  She shook her head.

  “I need a peaceweaver!”

  Hild said nothing.

  “I need one. Over the water those cursed Idings are making their name with Eochaid’s freckled brat, Domnall, who took a retinue to Meath and won some small squabble that they name a great battle, and today I find one of them has married a Pictish princess. A Pict! Now I have Idings feeling their oats at both ends of the Roman wall. Do you know what that means?”

  “War.”

  He blinked. “You’ve seen this?”

  Hild shook her head. There would be war, it was the way of the world. Young stags watched for the old to falter. The exiled Idings were feeling their strength, and Edwin had no daughters to marry into alliance with other Anglisc kings, and the Irish and Pictish might watch the old stag and think his antlers too heavy for his head. They might think it time to sweep down from the north and put the Idings as client kings on the throne. “Like the king stag, you must lift your head and show your tines.”

  “Well they are still sharp, by the gods. I have three hundred gesiths sworn to me til death. I give them treasure. I am greatly to be feared!”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “I will take the Isle of Vannin.”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “You’ve seen this?”

  Hild was used to his abrupt decisions and equally sudden reversals, but she could not get used to his insistence on visions. She looked at her mother, who gave her the look she had given on Modresniht more than a year ago—Talk to the king!—and gave the impression of stepping back a pace.

  Hild tried to tell Edwin what she saw.

  “The rooks in the west wood build their nests high in the elms. The squirrels skip past rowan berries without tasting.”

  He waited.

  Hild did her best. “The rooks don’t expect great winds; the squirrels know that other forage is plentiful yet.” He didn’t seem to understand. Her mother, at least, was nodding. Hild stepped back very slightly.

  “My king,” Breguswith said. “Our guiding light foresees that the winter weather will be a while. And with fine weather you might still take a ship to the Isle of Vannin, while Fiachnae mac Báetáin of the Dál nAriadne is drinking with the Ulaid in their moss-grown, fog-bound land.”

  “It is a risky plan.”

  “Yes, my king. But you are brave and your war band strong.”

  Edwin stared at the brightly woven blanket pulled over the bloodied mattress. Hild doubted he even saw its beautiful pattern, the poppy orange and calf-eye brown. But it didn’t take the light of the world to prophesy that if the blanket were not washed very soon it would be ruined, fit only for housefolk, and a blanket like that took two women a winter to card, spin, dye, and weave. And if someone didn’t take away the cup soon, someone else might work out what had happened.

  “And no peaceweaver?” He was looking at Hild.

  “No, Uncle.”

  “Will she die?”

  She didn’t believe her mother bore Cwenburh any ill will. “Perhaps not, if she tries no more children.”
/>
  * * *

  But two months later, as the court packed its wagons to move to York, where Edwin would consult with his lords on the matter of a winter war—a war that could have been fought and won by now if he hadn’t changed his mind so often—Cwenburh told her cousin, Mildburh, that she was again with child. Mildburh told Hereswith, who told her mother and Hild.

  Breguswith was scanning their apartment one last time—all was stowed in chests and bags; housefolk were dismantling the beds—when Edwin sent a boy to call Hild and her mother to his hall. They donned light wraps.

  It was a cold, grey morning of wind and fitful rain. Oxen lowed as drovers herded them from their warm byre and began the long business of fitting yokes and checking harnesses. Rain drummed on the stretched leather of the waiting wagons. Coelgar and his men marked wagon beds with chalk as they were loaded.

  The hall was dark and cool. The fires were out, the best hangings already taken down and rolled, and Edwin’s great sword and spear lifted from their hooks above his chair. Indeed, housefolk stood about, clearly waiting to remove the chair itself. By him stood Coifi, bare-armed and bear-cloaked as usual. And Lilla and a young gesith—tall as a fifteen-year oak sapling—called Forthere, looking watchful. And the latest Christ bishop, one of the less common ones, who held rolls of pale leather to the light and stared and murmured—their god must be very strange. And even the ugly old woman children threw stones at, who made auguries from burnt pinecones and the flights of birds. Dunne, Hild had heard her called. The hall reeked of sacrifice oils and incenses.

  “You told me she would bear no more children,” the king said to them as they walked into the dim hall.

  “Nor has she, my king,” said Breguswith.

  “Yet,” said Coifi.

  “Aye,” said the old woman. “She seems strong as a mare.”

  “So she seemed at other times,” Breguswith said.

  Everyone looked at Hild, who said nothing.

  “I want auguries,” the king said. “I want the opinion of every god mouth in this hall, and I want it before I climb on that miserable wagon.”